Morning journal and courier., 1887-03-11
THE:H1sToR1CAL SOCIETY.
r. w. R. HI. TrOWbrfdge Reads a Paper On a Trip in Egypt and the Holy l.and-A Large An6feuce.

MT. w. R. HI. TrOwbrfdge Reads a
 Paper On Trip in Egypt and the
 Holy Land-A Large Audience.
 It has come to be stated thing for the
 New Haven Colony Historical society to have
 cloudy or stormy day preceding their usual
 Monday evening meetings, and when they
 changed to a Thursday evening to avoid the
 storms they were promptly met by the clerk
 of the weather with cloudy sky and rains. But the mud was insufficient to keep at home the large audience who had made up their minds to be on hand last evening to hear MT. W. R. H. Trowbridge tell the story of | his own experiences in those ancient historic | countries so full of interest to the traveller l and which an observing traveller understands how to make very real to the nearer who has
 ears to hear and only regrets that he could l not be there to see. The title of the paper ! was ''Extracts from my journal of trip | through Egypt, Holy Land in 1864. !" | The trip was pleasure trip after the speak | CTS graduation from Yale college, and the | usual trip to Liverpool and thence to Alexan- | dria via the Straits of Gibraltar and through | the Mediterranean sea. There were the usual l events of sea voyage, touching at Gibraltar, Malta, etc. Interesting incidents of the his
 tory of the Knights of Malta were |
 anchored at Alexandria, and now they were in | the land of the Cheops, the Sphinx, the pyra- | mid and the Nile. The motley crowd at Alex
 andria was well described. The antiquities | were briefly mentioned, but of the vast num- Der few had necessarily more than the brief | est mention. But on Jan. 1, '65, he was at l Suez on his way to the southern part of Pal | estine taking the route of the Israelites by | Mt. Sinai. But the danger of that route from Bedouins turned them back, and they were compelled to take the usual route, but again were turned back by the irrepressible Bedouins, and so determined to see the Holy Land. The speaker turned back to Alexan dria to go by sea and take the steamer to Joppa, which, if history is correct, is the old est city in the world. The many interesting events in Joppa's history were barely men tioned, including visit to the house of hotel the party contracted with Robert Blackner for his services guide during the
 trip. The bad condition of the roads was
 well set forth not one of them being pass
 able for any sort of wheeled vehicles. Every
 step of the journey was full of interest and
 at last the travellers were in sight of the Holy
 City, the city of David, the city of the Great
 King.
 The multitude of interesting places allud-
 ed to forbids more than passing mention,
 but every foot is holy ground. "One of the
 strange characters I met here," said the
 speaker, twas singular specimen from
 Canada, who said he was the agent of com
 pany who were to build railroad to the
 desert through the land of Moab by which the
 one hundred and forty four thousand virgins should be able to escape when the Anti christ should appear. Where the virgins
 were to come from or why theyswere to meet and flee was not known. But our Canada friend was only one of the ever present array of cranks always more terrible to the average man than an army with banners. Every spot made sacred to the Christian heart is full of interest, though for many years the plough passed over the very top of Mt. Zion. l
 f'The 6esolate wilderness road from Jerusa 1 lem to Jericho has in wise improved upon | it's ancient character and we shall be thank | ful if we escape the fate of a certain man | who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho | and fell among thieves But we are not to be turned back by any such fears and push | on. Passing out of the wilderness road we pass down the gentle slope toward the valley | of the Jordan and the Enilder air is refresh | ing change from the cool breezes and light | frosts of the hill country round about Jeru- | salem. It was the month of January, but the l air was delightfully."- balmy and fruit abounded. | Turning southward toward the plain | towards which Lot looked and | where he pastured his focks four thousand 1 years ago we looked toward the Dead Sea. | Here the sugar cane grew and fourished long | before America was discovered and was | taken thence by the Crusaders to Spain, l from whence it was carried to the East and | West Indies. The vile nature of the water | of the Dead Sea was not a passing event, for | a bottle of it which took with me was used | (by mistake taken for water from | the Jordan in similar bottle) for baptizing | one of my children in the West Indies with | utterly unsatisfactory results.
 ''The hospitality of the monks in one of the ] which we visited where no Turk | or woman was ever allowed to enter was un- bounded. We were shownthe ghastly pile of | skulls of monks who died long ago, fourteen thousand in number.
 "Our visiting of Bethlehemwith all it's holy | occupied some days and every sa- cred spot, real or fancied, we visited, and also the burial place which Abraham bought | in which to bury his beloved Sarah, the cave of Machpelah Returning to Jerusalem we visited other points of interest and prepared for pursuing our journey"
 Hon. c. B. Bowers moved a vote of thanks for the reading of the paper and was very desirous to know whether the child that was baptized with water from the Dead Sea was better or worse for that unfortunate mistake, but that question involved points which the time was too short to allow proper discussion of, and after the unanimous vote of thanks was passed the society adjourned feeling richly repaid by the very interesting paper of MT. Trowbridge, which it was in- inuated would be followed by another one tt later day upon his journey up the Nile. l